The NewsHour is allegedly a “low-key, evenhanded [newscast], inclusive of all perspectives. FAIR studied NewsHour’s guestlist from October 2005 through March 2006 (six months) To evaluate NewsHour's claim to evenhandedness and commitment to the public interest. Here’s what Extra found: At a time when a large proportion of the U.S. public…
For a short time, I watched a few of the “forensic science” shows like CSI, mostly for a laugh at the junk science. I was particularly amused at the tool used to analyze metal. The actor put a hub cap in a plexiglass box, the box was filled with smoke or mist, and the printer spewed out paper. On that paper were the exact components of the metal, so much of this, so much of that. Then the formulation was compared to their list of hub cap manufacturers, and lo and behold, there were two retail distributors of that brand hub cap in the city. It was hilarious, like Lucy stuffing her shirt with chocolates from the speeding assembly line and about as likely.
I’ve stopped watching those shows, partly because they can only create so many magic plexiglass boxes, and because they’re so gory (regurgitated by a large snake was the end for me). I also read a (true) story of a lawsuit involving lost ashes of a loved one (cremains) and the two got me thinking about our funeral customs.
There are really some odd customs, and chief among them for me, since I have to face them repeatedly (one bad thing about getting old is that your friends and family are old, too, and you lose a lot of them), is our ‘dress up’ custom. That is where we take a body, dress it up in special clothes (sometimes bought new for the occasion, sometimes picked out …
I just finally got around to reading my June 2006 Communications of the ACM (an academic computer journal) and spotted a little news brief about Britannica trying to sue Nature magazine for this December 2005 Article that noted that the error rate in science entries of Wikipedia is comparable to…
The November mid-term election is exactly one month from today. Any guesses on what sort of October Surprise the Republicans have cooked up to help them win despite their dismal performance and lousy poll results? Will Osama bin Laden be killed or captured? Will gas prices hit a new low? Will the stock market…
In September, 2005, I traveled to London to attend a conference. While in London, I visited Westminster Abbey. Bury Darwin: A Deep Dive into the Historical and Political Context It is hard to imagine a place more rich in history--there was so much to see. But I made sure that I took the…